The Final Act: Jubilation And Anguish

 

Randolph-Macon College yearbook 1980



In close games, the back-and-forth momentum shifts continue right up until a jubilant (or anguished) moment of awareness that winning (or losing) is at hand.

These heightened emotions are the culmination of having trained, practiced, competed, and succeeded or failed. It's a complexity of expression akin to childbirth, and it happens once a week for an entire season. 

As a young athlete, I experienced an inflamed tibial tuberosity, an avulsed medial epicondyle and it's surgical pinning, a torn hamstring, a broken nose, a shattered first metacarpal, and a fractured third phalanx. Instead of thumbing that splinted middle finger at sports, I came back again and again, against all reason and for those shared feelings.

The seven acts of a player's experience have their exits and their entrances. One person in their time plays many parts, from locker room therapist to ritual leader, from finding a focus to celebrating a small success, from making a big play to hanging on to a lead, all with the hope of celebrating a win or commiserating over a loss. 




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